Saturday, June 27, 2009

So Stephen Curry isn't going to be immediately traded by Golden State after all, according to Warriors coach Don Nelson. (Here's the story about that). That puts a little closure to the events of Thursday night.

After attending the NBA draft for the first time in 20 years or so, I put together a list of random observations that ran in some late editions of Friday's Observer (but not all, due to our deadlines). For those who missed them, here they are:

 Some of the biggest boos of the night in WaMu Theater came when Bobcats coach Larry Brown’s ESPN interview from Charlotte was broadcast on TV. Brown’s coaching gig with the Knicks ended very poorly in 2006. The unprintable obscenities hurled at the TV screens in unison made it very clear that Knicks fans haven’t forgotten.

 This was the first time I had come to New York to cover the NBA draft in close to 20 years, and I’d forgotten what it felt like. The place is set up like a large TV studio and is really in a far smaller room than you’d think. It’s not in Madison Square Garden itself, but in a theater attached to MSG with maybe 1,500 people inside.

 If Spanish point guard Ricky Rubio’s gig in the NBA doesn’t work out – he was taken No.5 Thursday by Minnesota – he should have a career in a boy band. Rubio certainly has the hair for it.

 The weird thing about the NBA “green room”? It is not green, nor is it a room. On Thursday, the waiting area for NBA draft picks and their loved ones was simply a cordoned-off area separated by only a few feet from both the media and the fans.

 Roy Williams, Rick Pitino, John Calipari, Bob McKillop, Jeff Capel – you could have held quite a college coaching clinic in a 20-yard radius in that NBA green room.

 Davidson’s Stephen Curry was the third point guard picked, by Golden State at No.7. And while the Warriors weren’t his first choice, it’s probably a better alternative than being the first or second point guard taken. At Nos.5 and 6, the Minnesota Timberwolves picked two rookie point guards back to back – Rubio and Syracuse’s Jonny Flynn. Also, Curry gets to experience California’s weather year-round instead of Minnesota’s.

It wasn't in the paper on Friday, which was the day after the draft. I saw it on Saturday after I posted here.

'Why does it matter?' Because I went to bed thinking we drafted two players in the second round and woke up not being able to read about EITHER of them in the local paper. I had to go to ESPN.COM to even find out we traded the pick.

So, Michael, one might wonder what the Observer sports guys are doing if they can't even cover 3 draft picks by the local team. We used to get bios on each draft pick etc but I didn't see any of that here. Perhaps it was in the print version of the paper.

The point is, Michael, not that he isn't going to play here, but what we did with the pick in the first place. I don't expect a writeup about the guy after we traded him, I do expect the paper to acknowledge that there were two second round picks and let the fans know what happened with them.